It's an internet environment for people who want to learn Frisian, and it contains a lot of material. You can read all about it on the site itself. Be sure not to skip this demonstration. If you sign up before 2008 takes off, you'll be able to participate for free during the first two months of the new year. Hope it will be useful. I myself will continue to be able to help with Frisian any time as well.

I find it a bit hard to use. For one, you cannot replay the audio of words saved into the memo list. Secondly, you can only save individual words out of context instead of phrases or sentences. Also, there are 2 pages of resources for me but 5 on the demo, do I have to pay to get the rest?

I think it's meant more for people who already know a bit of Frisian or at least some Dutch. I think it's hard to use for beginners

The coding for the site is quite good. If there are any serious glitches to be found there, I didn't stumble across them during today's session.

What's still weak is how the different files and pages get catalogued. It's not at all obvious that there's any set of beginners' videos, for example, or any effort on the part of the site owners to post a beginners' module to the site first-thing. Instead, material appears to have been added because the coding had been completed, and listed in the order in which pieces were added.

There exists a set of dictation exercises, but these don't, as far as I can see, drill the eduFrysk user on skills learned in any of the existing videos. The site really needs to create some corresponding videos that concentrate on Frisian keyboard conventions or the relationship between Frisian spelling and pronunciation. The dictation exercises are also, as I recall, rated as being rather advanced. Less advanced levels are yet to be populated by exercises.

eduFrysk uses a variation of the immersion method, which should definitely give the advantage to anyone familiar with Dutch or Afrikaans. For the rest of us, the words for the various videos and audio files have translation-on-mouseover, which usually yields the gist of the sentence when all the components get added up. I seem to recall that the Pimsleur method is also an immersion method; if that's the case, and if you like using Pimsleur products, you'll probably like using eduFrysk.

For my taste and custom, I'd say that I'd need either residence in Fryslân or some sort of textbook, or both, to learn Frisian well using eduFrysk. The site is associated with a Frisian bookstore, Afûk, so for a mere €13.50 plus shipping, I could make do with a more academic reference grammar. (I'd prefer a bilingual primer, but the only one I've heard of, Eurotalk's Talk Now Learn Frisian, isn't exactly on every bookstore shelf.)

Bottom line: If you're already living in Fryslân or otherwise studying Frisian, eduFrysk as it exists right now would be a good source of supplementary annotated practice texts and audio files. If they add some specifically beginners' material and improve the organization of their files a bit, they'll be much more useful. And since there's little other Frisian material on offer, anyone interested in learning Frisian will want to sign up for the free pilot program test of eduFrysk despite any of its current weaknesses.

How nice to see that our site is picked up here! Thanks for your comments and off course we will be doing something with them.

I have to point out, as someone all ready posted here, it is a pilot, we are not finished yet. eduFrysk started as something for Frisians and Dutch people and later on we decided we also wanted to make a version for English. But because learning Frisian from English is very different from learning Frisian from Dutch, we are now trying to find out what is the best way to do this.

All the comments made here are things we still have to implement, but it are things we are aware of. But it costs a lot of time to make something like eduFrysk and to fill it with the right content takes even more time (and money and people). We don't have a large team to make this and we also have to make the Dutch version even better.

But please post your ideas and comments here, we will be reading them and if possible use them. Its great to have direct contact with users!

The biggest problem now is indeed the level. We know the level is much too high, but we are trying to make content for beginners.

Kind regards,

Vincent Bonsteam eduFrysk

BTW: words can be listened to in your memo word list.BTW2: if you want to contact me within eduFrysk, you can find me within the eduFrysk Wide Web.